


Love is like an avalanche

by tocourtdisaster



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Gen, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-27 01:20:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6263890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tocourtdisaster/pseuds/tocourtdisaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Fuck fate," Ronan says and steps in front of Gansey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love is like an avalanche

**Author's Note:**

> I had this thought and I wanted to get it down in words before The Raven King josses the whole thing because I am currently full of feelings about dumb raven boys and their not-psychic not-raven girl.
> 
> If anything in this story doesn't jive with current canon, let's just handwave that and call the whole thing vaguely AU-ish.
> 
> Title from "Avalanche" by Margot & the Nuclear So and So's.

"Fuck fate," Ronan says and steps in front of Gansey.  
  
There's a scream and a sound like a gunshot or the crack of a tree branch or the breaking of a heart; there's a sudden wind that whips the rain into Adam's exposed skin like needles while he stands there watching Ronan sway and sway before he falls.  
  
Everything goes silent (silent as the grave, Adam's treacherous mind supplies) the moment Ronan's knees hit the ground.  
  
Only once it's silent does Adam realize that he was the one screaming.  


\---  


"Where do you go when you disappear?"  
  
Noah had appeared in the passenger seat of the Hondoyota sometime between when Adam got in the car and now, fading into focus so slowly that Adam isn't sure when he noticed the other boy was next to him.  
  
Noah hums, tracing a fingertip against the condensation on the window. "Away," he answers.  
  
Adam squints and flips on his headlights. It had been the middle of the day in Cabeswater and still on the bright side of dusk when he'd left. He always forgets how quickly darkness falls in autumn.  
  
"That's not really the answer I was going for," Adam says, keeping his eyes on the winding road before him.  
  
"I know," Noah says. "But that's the only answer I can give you."  
  
When Adam hazards a glance away from the road, Noah is gone. The condensation on the window is undisturbed.

 

\---  


He can feel Cabeswater in his blood, like a pulse. Thinking of the power like his pulse had ultimately been the key to learning to control it almost completely. It doesn't overwhelm him now.  
  
Like his pulse, he really only feels it when he's trying to or when he's completely silent or still. He can keep it steady if he's mindful of it.  
  
He's always mindful of the power that's lurking just beneath his skin.  
  
But he also wonders if, like his pulse, a good shock to the system will ratchet it into high gear and totally beyond his control.

  
\---

 

Cabeswater is silent in his head.  
  
 _(His skin aches.)  
  
_ Ronan is dead.  
  
 _(His jaw is clenched so tightly he's not sure he'll ever open it again.)  
  
_ Gansy is alive.  
  
 _(He can feel every hair on his body standing on end.)  
  
_ Ronan sacrificed himself to save Gansey.  
  
 _(It's like he's being struck by lighting, again and again and again.)_  
  
And the power from Ronan's sacrifice is burning Adam up from the inside out.

  
\---

  
Adam wakes every Sunday to the sound of bells.  
  
Sunday isn't exactly a day of rest for him, but he is able to sleep in owing to nearly everything in town opening late in deference to the rather large church-going population of Henrietta.  
  
So he doesn't bother with an alarm and wakes to the sound of bells and the knowledge that Ronan is in the church below him, practicing whatever faith remains to him.  
  
Adam would be envious of Ronan's ability to believe if he was sure that Ronan wasn't just going through with the motions for Matthew and for the memory of their father.

  
\---

  
"To be conduit of power is to be invisible," Persephone tells him one evening when they miraculously have the reading room to themselves.  
  
Adam is aimlessly shuffling a tarot deck, most of his concentration taken over by trying to track Persephone as she wanders around the room. It's surprisingly difficult to keep her in focus.  
  
"You will never be more important than the ley line that you now serve," she continues and Adam nods because this he knows. "Eventually, even those who know you intimately will be hard pressed to see Adam inside of the magician."  
  
Mostly, Adam is okay with this. He's spent so much of his life hiding behind his fear that there's almost no one who knows who he really is. He's not even sure Gansey knows the real Adam anymore. Maybe only Ronan knows him now, Ronan who reached out to him and who has refused to be pushed aside time after time.  
  
He wonders, though, how long he has before even Ronan doesn't know him anymore.

  
\---

 

Blue is crying.  
  
Ronan is lying on his face, arms bent awkwardly at his sides where he fell.  
  
Gansey is crying.  
  
Adam is standing, held upright only by the power of the ley line surging through him like an electrical current.  
  
Noah appears suddenly in front of him, blocking his view of Ronan.  
  
"Would you like to see where I go when I disappear?" he asks and without waiting for an answer, takes Adam's face between his hands.  
  
Everything goes black.

  
\---

  
They take Maura home and tell her about Persephone and Adam finds himself hiding out in the hallway with Ronan instead of trying to look Maura in the eye because he failed to find Persephone in time.  
  
"You know it's not your fault, right?" Ronan asks. He leans his shoulder against Adam's and doesn't move it away.  
  
"How long will it take for me to really believe that?" Adam asks, leaning a little less into the wall and a little more into Ronan.  
  
"I'll let you know when I figure that out," Ronan says, and it doesn't take a genius to know he's thinking about his father.  
  
Adam lets his hand brush against Ronan's and when Ronan grips his fingers, he holds on just as tightly.

  
\---

  
Adam isn't sure he exists is this place, if where he is can even be called a place. It's more of a feeling or knowledge of a feeling than a location.  
  
"Noah?" he calls or maybe whispers or maybe only thinks. "Ronan?"  
  
He isn't alone. He is completely alone. He is everything and nothing and everything again all at once.  
  
He can feel Cabeswater all around him. Its grief for the Greywaren is the most palpable thing in this nothingness of a place.  
  
"I'm going to bring him back," Adam says/whispers/thinks. "You won't be alone."  
  
 _Do not make promises that you cannot keep, Magician._  
  
Adam isn't sure how he's going to do it, but he's never made a promise he hasn't been able to keep and he's not about to start now.

  
\---

  
"Noah seems a lot more stable lately," Ronan says apropos of nothing one afternoon when homework won over the search for Glendower. "Physically, I mean, not emotionally."  
  
Noah, ever mature, flips Ronan off.  
  
"That's not surprising, with Adam stabilizing the ley line more and more every time he goes out," Gansey says, not even looking up from his calculus.  
  
"Thank you, Adam," Noah sing-songs and wraps his arm around Adam's shoulders.  
  
"Of course," Adam replies. "I'll do anything I can to help."

  
\---

 

There is no sight in this place, but Adam is suddenly aware of Noah. He doesn't know how he knows it's Noah, but he's sure of it.  
  
He reaches out with a hand he's not sure he still possesses and is surprised and gratified when his fingers press against an arm. He skates his fingers down Noah's arm until he can grasp his hand. Now that he's not alone, he's not letting go until they're gone from this place.  
  
"You have to let go if you want to save Ronan," Noah says/thinks/feels to Adam.  
  
"How can I be sure I'll find him?"  
  
"You have to have faith."

  
\---

  
Ronan comes up to Adam's apartment after church, tie already loose around his neck and jacket tossed over one shoulder like a Ralph Lauren ad.  
  
Adam lets him into the tiny room and sits on the end of the bed to put on his shoes. He has to be at work in half an hour and only has a few minutes before he needs to leave.  
  
Ronan tosses his jacket across the back of Adam's single chair and his shoes go flying across the room when he kicks them off. His belt lands against the floor with a clatter.  
  
Adam bounces a little when Ronan flops onto the bed behind him.  
  
"How was church?" Adam asks.  
  
"You mean my fight with Declan?" Ronan counters, but it's less venomous than it might otherwise be due to the fact that Ronan has his face pressed into Adam's pillow. "Same as always."  
  
Adam sighs, wishing Ronan and Declan could just get along, but knowing why that will never again happen.  
  
"Can you lock up when you leave this time?" Adam asks instead of pushing. "I hate when I come home and the door's unlocked."  
  
"No key," Ronan says.  
  
Adam's only reply is to press a freshly cut copy of his door key to the back of Ronan's neck.

  
\---

  
As soon as Adam lets go of Noah, he is alone again. He drifts in the darkness-not-darkness for an eternity and a microsecond. He starts to forget who he is, why he is.  
  
There is a hand in his. He doesn't know how long it's been there, but he knows it.  
  
"Ronan," he says/whispers/thinks.  
  
"Adam," Ronan says/whispers/thinks in reply. There are lips against Adam's, breath against the cheeks he's just now remembering he has. "Take me home?"  
  
Adam can barely feel Cabeswater rejoicing over his own elation.  
  
"Noah?"  
  
For an eternity that lasts only a moment, there is nothing and then Noah is there, one hand on the back of Adam's neck, the other on Ronan's.  
  
"Would you like to see where I go to know I'm loved?"

  
\----

  
"Are you telling me my life is Harry fucking Potter?" Ronan demands from where Blue and Gansey are holding him bodily in his bed. "Love is what saved the world? Bullshit."  
  
"Lay down, you surly bastard," Gansey grunts with the effort of trying to hold Ronan in place. "Unless you'd like to pass out as soon as you stand up again? Just be warned, I'm not picking you up off the floor again today."  
  
Ronan subsides, though obviously grudgingly. Adam, from where he's standing in the doorway behind Noah, wishes he was next to Ronan too, but he's too scared.  
  
 _Love._  
  
That was the word Noah used, the one Ronan used just now. Adam knows he loves Ronan, but is it the kind of love that shakes the earth and saves the day?  
  
"Of course it is," Noah says, being creepy again and answering a thought pulled straight from Adam's brain. "Duh."  
  
Fuck it, Adams decides. He grabs hold of Noah on his way past and stops at the edge of the bed only long enough to figure out where he'll fit, but soon enough he's wedged between Ronan and Gansey, Blue grasping at Ganey's hand over the other boys, Noah stretched out almost weightlessly over everyone's legs.  
  
"Fuck my life," Ronan mutters, but Adam doesn't take offense since the words are muttered into his collarbone where Ronan has his face pressed. "I'm Harry Potter."


End file.
